Grammar Gazette- Issue 1, 2012

Building academic fitness in Year 8 Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought with ardour and attended to with diligence. Abigail Adams (1780)

Beginning secondary school is an exciting and challenging time for young people. A new environment, new routines and new opportunities characterise this anxiety-provoking and rewarding. Many girls embark upon new pursuits; they trial for new sporting teams, time making it simultaneously

to excel in the sporting arena or as a musician. We then applied these ideas to their academic work, exploring the concept of academic fitness (Martin, 2010). To improve their academic fitness students need to train; they need to persevere in the face of difficulties and accept that sometimes they will fail. Equating the effort needed to learn well with the effort needed to be an exceptional musician or athlete is empowering for students. It enables us to discuss the behaviours and attitudes that characterise effective learning in a way that is accessible to young adolescents. Using this platform, the Philosophy of Learning curriculum focuses on a number of key concepts—reflection, mindset, resilience and metacognition—linking them to the overarching theme of academic fitness. To ensure that these ideas are understood and internalised by the Year 8 girls, the concepts are embedded into the content of the wider curriculum. This allows the theories to be reinforced, making them meaningful to students and increasing the rate of transfer from one context to another. A student’s capacity to transfer material has been established as a key tenet of effective learning (Bransford, Brown & Cocking, 2000, p.51). Each Year 8 girl has a learning journal which she takes to all her lessons. This journal provides a tangible and visible medium for the conceptual links we are promoting. The practice of self-reflection in learning is inherently valuable because of its strong connection to meta- cognition (Bransford et al., 2000, p.97). This is alluded to in numerous educational texts, but Costa (2008) emphasises the importance of ensuring that students are assisted in developing the appropriate strategies to engage meaningfully with it. We have incorporated reflection into the curriculum of our new subject, linking it to academic fitness by equating it with ‘training’ for learning. Most students have been asked to reflect upon various events throughout their primary school education but many seem to lack an understanding of what it means to reflect and

they begin learning a new musical instrument or join a new club. For others the transition to Year 8 means an invigorated approach to continuing activities—a more systematic practice schedule for their music or renewed determination to improve their fitness and develop their sporting prowess. Similarly the girls’ approach to learning is very often more positive than it has been for some time. They have new books, new teachers and in some instances new subjects to study. It is important that we, as educators and parents, capture this enthusiasm and take advantage of the opportunity it provides for growth in all dimensions. There is no better time to be talking to students about the possibilities for learning, thinking and intellectual development than in Term I of Year 8. year—the introduction of a new subject, Philosophy of Learning. Each Year 8 class has a fifty minute lesson once a fortnight for the entire year. As the name indicates, this subject is about learning, but it is about learning in its broadest form allowing links to be made between subjects and activities. In the first session the girls discussed the importance of practice and perseverance when endeavouring With this in mind, Brisbane Girls Grammar School has embarked upon an exciting initiative this

7 Grammar Gazette Autumn 2012